Hidden diversity of endophytic fungi in an invasive plant.

Fungal endophytes are important in plant ecology and common in plants. We attempted to test cointroduction and host-jumping hypotheses on a community basis by comparing endophytes isolated from invasive spotted knapweed (Centaurea stoebe, Asteraceae) in its native and invaded ranges. Of 92 combined, sequence-based haplotypes representing eight classes of Fungi, 78 occurred in only one of the two ranges. In the native range of C. stoebe, one haplotype of Alternaria alternata was clearly dominant, whereas in the invaded range, no haplotype was dominant. Many haplotypes were closely related to one another and novel. For example, six putative, new species of Botrytis were discovered as endophytes of C. stoebe, which has never been reported to have Botrytis spp.. Apparent differences between the two communities of endophytes were significant according to an analysis of similarity, but phylogenetic community structure did not differ significantly between the ranges. Both host-jumping and cointroduction of fungal endophytes likely took place during the spotted knapweed invasion.